moon is destroyed?

Question

what if the moon was hit with an asteroid. and was split into a few pieces? what would happen? tides get screwed up? what else?

Answer 1

Impact of lunar destruction were as follows:

(1) No more big tides, surfing, etc. Tides wouldn't disappear entirely, since the sun would continue to tug on the oceans, causing high tides of diminished amplitude at noon and midnight. But, as one early consultant pointed out, it's a safe bet the bottom would fall out of the tourist trade in the Bay of Fundy, noted for its tidal extremes.

(2) Dogs would have to bay at, I dunno, Alpha Centauri.

(3) Much darker at night. Duh, you say, but a fair amount of nocturnal activity among the lower orders is pegged to moonlight.

(4) The famous children's book Goodnight Moon would require considerable rethinking.

(5) One less thing to rhyme with June.

(6) We'd have to think up another name for shoving your naked butt out the car window at passersby.

(7) No more eclipses.

(8) On July 20, 2069, people will say, "Neil who walked on what?"

In other words, we'd probably cope. If it were left to me I'd say go ahead, but there are a lot of scaremongers out there. A sampling of proposed fatal scenarios:

(1) Loss of the meteorite shield and resultant flaming death. Some say that if not for the moon, all those meteorites that made huge craters (150 miles and more in diameter) on the lunar surface would have flattened Nebraska instead. Like anybody would have noticed. My feeling is, while lunar shielding may have been important in the early days of the solar system, how many giant meteorites do you see crashing into the moon now? I want to know what the moon has done for me lately.

(2) End of life as we know it. In his book What If the Moon Didn't Exist? Voyages to Earths That Might Have Been (1993), astronomer Neil Comins speculates that life would never have evolved from the primordial soup if not for the moon and accompanying tides. With weaker solar tides and thus a lesser distance between the littoral reach of high and low tides, there would have been fewer tidal pools, the petri dish for so many forms of life. As one commentator puts it, no amphibians = no land animals = no us. However, at the risk of appearing ungrateful, I have to point out that, evolutionarily speaking, we're kinda past the lizard stage. The riposte to this is that even now tidal motion helps keep the oceans churned up, circulating nutrients and generally helping to promote life beneath the waves. No churning = no circulating nutrients = no life.

(3) Orbital instability. This has been the most controversial area of all. At first my reaction was, what orbital instability? Everybody knows that the radius of the earth's orbit r = GM/v2, where G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of the sun, and v is the earth's orbital velocity. In other words, orbital radius is independent of planetary mass, so despite the loss of 1/81 of the combined terralunar bulk, orbitwise the earth would rock on. Various individuals claim, though, that earth's orbit would become more elliptical, its axial tilt would become wobblier due to the influence of Jupiter, and who knows what else. If God had been subject to this kind of environmental impact stuff, the creation of the universe would still be in community hearings. I say let her blow. How bad could it be?

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/001027.html

Answer 2

There are only a couple of asteroids large enough to smash the Moon and they are nowhere near us nor will they ever be. but let's suppose an asteroid came from space and it was large enough to smash the Moon.

We would already have problems that would wipe out all life, so the economy would not be an issue. Tidal forces from something that size would be devastating, setting off major earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and since it would be moving pretty fast, the material from the collision would be vaporized or made molten.

We would be faced with millions of years of huge bombardments and this planet would be pretty much destroyed.

Answer 3

Our orbit would be affected. Normally the earth tilts at an angle because of the moon, and it's this tilt that makes for the changing of the seasons. If the only gravitational force was the sun, eventually, the earth would probably be rotating at a perfectly perpendicular direction from the sun, after a period of turbulence from the shift. The seasons as we know them would never be the same.

Answer 4

well, the orbit of the pieces of the moon would almost certainly be unstable and depending on the force and direction of the impact etc, one of the pieces of the moon would probably be pulled into the earth and the resultant collision would probably destroy most of the life on earth, and change the orbit of the earth

no one would notice the screwed up tides

Answer 5

expensive Stanley: Er-r-r, i do no longer think of everyone is going to break the Moon each time quickly. it must be hit my some meteors and asteriods in our lifetime, besides the undeniable fact that. those impacts could have little impression upon the difficulty of our Moon as a results of fact of their relative length in assessment to that of the Moon. If the Moon have been destroyed, area of the debris could fall to Earth, and area could shoot out into area removed from the Earth (assuming some style of explosion). The components hitting Earth could be giant in assessment to previous asteroid and meteor hits we've got here across. So, for all intents and applications, life on earth could end to exist. in all probability, over an prolonged, long term life varieties could repopulate the Earth in one type or yet another. :acking the Moon as an outdoors pulling stress, the Earth's waters does no longer be concern to tidal impacts. that must be an considerable replace interior the way particularly some sealife get carry of their nutrition. Many sea creatures count on the ebb and pass of tides to grant their nutrition to them. Please do no longer look ahead to the moon to bypass away any time quickly.

Answer 6

The moons gravitational pull is what keeps the earth travelling in the right direction. Without the moon, the earth would probably fly off into space and we would all freeze.

Answer 7

The economy would go into the tanks. The worldwide antichrist would come on the scene. A one world government would be formed. The whole world would blame Israel. Finally Christ would return.